


You Go Wherever You Go Today

by CasualDanger



Series: The Mykonos Stories [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heroes in Crisis - Freeform, POV Dick Grayson, Protective Jason Todd, literally just talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 01:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16944438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasualDanger/pseuds/CasualDanger
Summary: Set during Heroes in Crisis, but the Ric BS has been ~~cleared up~~ because that's stupid. Literally just two brothers chatting it up after a bunch of their friends have died."They sat together, but apart from each other in a way that was palpable, had always been palpable to Dick. He wasn't even sure how he had gotten this far with Jason, and there was no course to navigate farther."





	You Go Wherever You Go Today

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Mykonos -- Fleet Foxes. 
> 
> "Brother, you don't need to turn me away / I was waiting down at the ancient gate / You go wherever you go, today . . ."
> 
> This story is not exciting in any way, it's mostly dialogue, so if that's not for you read at your own discretion.

Dick was told over the phone. Truthfully, he can’t remember _who_ exactly told him over the phone, but when he finally came back to himself, sitting against his bedroom door, the living room trashed around him and phone cracked in hand, he knew there was no other way.

Roy was dead. Wally too, again. Eddie. He remembered it all, fought the world and his own mind to remember – and lose it all over again. If he wasn’t so used to it, he’d be sick. There was a brief moment where Dick almost conjured it up on purpose, wanted a tangible physical ailment, to prove maybe that something was wrong and he was affected. Instead, Dick stood up and willed his phone to life even with its broken screen. He called Tim on auto-pilot, who picked up on the first ring, holding a little tighter now that Dick was going by Dick again.

“You heard,” Tim said. It wasn’t a question, but it did have a certain hesitation to it, a vibration that moved at the same frequency Dick’s whole body was shaking at. Roy, Wally, Eddie. Dead, dead, dead.

“I heard,” Dick replied. His voice sounded as if he had been screaming.

“They call you?”

“Yeah,” he said, wiping down his face.

Tim scoffed. “That’s messed up. Are you okay?”

“Too many people to tell, I guess.”

“Yeah, maybe. Are you okay?”

“Where are you?”

Tim laughed bitterly – barely – through the phone. “Do not ‘Jason’ me right now, Dick. _Are you okay?_ ”

“Oh shit, Jason,” Dick gasped. “Oh _shit_. Has anyone told him?”

There was a long pause on the other line. “I don’t know,” Tim said. “Maybe B.”

It was Dick’s turn to scoff. “That’s probably worse. Do you know where he is?”

“Almost never. Dick, seriously, are you doing okay?”

As he was thinking of another deflection, a loud knocking came from the front door, almost as if someone was trying to pound the door down.

“Hold, please,” he said to Tim, hearing the younger boy start to curse as he dropped the phone from his ear. Before he got to the front of the apartment, whoever had knocked figured out the door was unlocked and let themselves in. They stood apart, looking at each other.

Dick held the phone back up to his ear. “Found him, love you,” he said, and hung up. In front of him was Jason Todd.

And it _was_ Jason – no red hood in sight, a semi-fashionable if altogether worn leather jacket across his shoulders instead of the utilitarian monstrosity he wore out at night, with a thin black t-shirt underneath instead of any Kevlar.

Before either of them spoke, Jason turned to close the door behind him, bolting it as well. He dropped the duffle bag he was holding by his feet; Dick hadn’t even noticed he was carrying anything, his observational skills shuttering off somewhere around Jason’s face with the absurd thought: _Does he still smoke?_

“Do you still smoke?” Dick asked aloud.

Jason’s face screwed up. “Are you in shock?”

“Just wondering,” he shrugged.

“Just wondering because you’re in shock?”

“At least now I know why Tim told me not to ‘Jason’ him,” Dick said. His voice was still flat, hoarse. Maybe he _was_ in shock.

“Every once in a while,” Jason answered. “Not much.” He took two steps forward. They were still so far apart, half the living room between them.

“Those things will stunt your growth,” Dick said. Jason chuckled, cracked a bit of a smile, but came no closer.

“A lot of your friends just died,” Jason said, as close to casual as his voice could manage, but it was messy. His voice always dripped with something; when he was with Bruce, the edge was anger, mostly, sarcastic and bitter. Now, it splattered nervous energy all over the floor. He tried to reign some of it in. “Are you good?”

Dick remembered quickly a moment, a much tinier Jason jabbing his finger into Dick’s chest, seeing straight through whatever unimportant bullshit Dick had conjured up.

“Not at all actually,” Dick said blandly. “How about you?”

“No, dumbass, I didn’t mean it like that.” He waved away Dick’s answer. “I mean _Titans_ are dead.” He looked pointedly around the trashed room, gestured at Dick’s scabbed knuckles. “Are you good?”

Dick laughed openly, hysterically. “You asshole,” he wheezed out, but something was lighter in his chest, if only incrementally.

“I did this,” Dick said, sobering up. “You think whoever killed all those supers was going after Titans?”

“It’s a distinct possibility, considering,” Jason replied. “Which is why I’m here.”

“No offense, Jay, but you were never really on the full-time roster,” Dick hedged.

Jason took a deep sigh and rolled his eyes. “You’ve been out of the game and off your rocker for a little while, _Dick_. I’m here in case the assholes who did this show up. Since you _were_ on the precious full-time roster.”

“Oh,” Dick said. In truth, he was at a loss for what to do. A part of him, sounding suspiciously like Bruce, wanted to tell Jason to take a hike. He could handle it on his own, and even if he couldn’t, there was no way the two of them could stomach working with each other for very long. Something was always going to come up, ruin it, blow their tentative brotherhood to hell for a while until they licked their wounds separately and pretended it never happened.

And yet . . .

“What’s the plan?” he asked Jason, moving to the couch knocked a few inches askew. “Chill here until someone comes knocking?”

Jason joined him on the couch, dropping heavily onto the other side. “If you wanted something more complex, you should have asked Barbara.”

“Technically, I didn’t even ask you.”

Jason scoffed but ignored him.

It must have been a good ten minutes that they sat there, close but not touching, in as close to silence as one could get with the streets of Gotham just four stories below them. Dick had fully leaned back into the couch, tension bleeding out of him, exhausted by the information in a way he hadn’t been in a while. Not even coming back to himself had been this draining, but that hadn’t been this numbing, either.

Jason stole a glance his direction and sighed. He stood and stretch his hand out to Dick.

“Get up,” he said.

“Where are we going?” Dick asked.

“Getting food. It’s the perfect time between lunch and dinner where there’ll be less people out. We can find some hole in the wall.”

Dick took his hand, but looked at him quizzically. From his position on the couch, Jason standing in front of him, he could see that Jason was packing under his jacket still, a simple 9 MM.

“Don’t worry,” Jason said when he saw that Dick had noticed. “This fake identity has a concealed carry permit.” When Dick looked up, Jason was smirking, but his eyes were dead serious, waiting.

Another absurd though popped into Dick’s head.

“Did you know how to shoot a gun before Bruce did his whole ‘You have to know how to use the weapon I expressly forbid’ thing?” he asked, watching Jason’s eyes soften.

“You remember that shit?” he replied breezily. “What a weirdo.”

There was silence. He didn’t answer. Dick let himself be pulled up from his seat.

True to his word, Jason steered them into the closest hold in the wall to the apartment, a pizza joint that was completely deserted save for the bored looking teenage girl manning the counter.

“One pepperoni pizza, please,” Jason said to her, “for here.”

She raised her head from where it was resting in her hand. “Generally,” she said, “people pay by the slice. It’ll take at least twenty minutes to make another pizza.”

Jason flashed her a smile, courteous if not completely fake – a Wayne smile. “That’s okay,” he said. “We’re in no rush.”

Dick sauntered over to a booth in the back while Jason paid, sliding in gingerly. His joints were stiff with exhaustion, but his head felt a little clearer after the walk, even the smoggy, humid air doing him some good.

Jason sat down next to him, cramming the space with his bulkier frame.

“What are you doing?” Dick asked, a half-laugh bubbling out of him as he adjusted in what little space was left.

“Like I’m going to sit with my back to the door,” Jason scoffed.

“Oh my God, could you _be_ more Bruce?” Dick groaned.

Jason crossed his arms, but his voice held no heat. “Now you’re just trying to insult me.”

Dick shrugged. “Maybe,” he allowed. “When did you find out?”

“That I was like B?” Jason asked, sarcasm dripping from his grimace.

“No,” Dick said, spinning the salt shaker on the table, avoiding the other’s eyes. “When did you find out they were gone?”

“You’re not gonna believe me,” Jason said. “ _I_ barely believe me.”

Dick rolled his eyes and gestured for him to go on.

“Dan Cassidy got a hold of me. I don’t know who the hell hooked him up with my number, but it was him.”

“ _Blue Devil_ called you?”

“Keep your voice down, prick. Yes, Blue Devil called me. They must have talked to him about Eddie.”

“You haven’t been running with Eddie recently though, right? He was kind of in the wind before, well . . .”

Jason shook his head. “I haven’t talked to Eddie in a long time.” The implication of ‘before’ hung over the end of his sentence, and Dick could hear it loud and clear without Jason even saying the words.

“So why did he call you about it?” Dick asked.

Jason waited until their pizza had been dropped off and the girl was back at her post before answering. “If you laugh,” he said, “I will shoot you.”

At that, Dick finally turned to look at the side of Jason’s face. “Scout’s honor,” he said.

“We used to be pen pals,” he said. “Back in the day. Way back. Like, short pants back.”

There was silence for a moment as both of them busied themselves with grabbing a slice. “I’m not going to laugh,” Dick said dutifully, “even though I know you won’t shoot me.”

“Haven’t I shot you before?”

“Probably,” Dick said. “Who told you about Roy?”

Jason paused, heavier this time. The leather jacket almost cracked around him with the tension he now carried.

“The news,” Jason said.

“Jesus,” Dick said.

“When Cassidy said it went down at Sanctuary, I knew. The coverage that’s going on about it just confirmed, honestly.” Jason took a bite of his pizza, chewing slowly.

“For what it’s worth,” Dick said while Jason’s mouth was occupied, “I’m glad you weren’t there.”

Jason almost choked on his bite. When he swallowed, he barked out a second of too-loud laughter.

“B may be helping to fund that place, but if you think a Bat will ever use that facility, your brain is way more fucked than everybody thought.”

“We get it, Jason, you’re emotionally constipated.” He hid his goading smile in the bite of a pizza slice.

Jason laughed and took another bite of his own slice. “And yet I’m the second least emotionally constipated one in the family.”

“Am I the least?” Dick asked, food still in his mouth.

“No shit,” Jason snorted. “Kind of why I don’t understand what you’re doing right now, being emotionally constipated.”

“It’s been a long day, I guess,” Dick said. “Give me a minute; I’m sure I’ll get there.”

“Looking forward to it,” Jason said.

Dick chuckled. “Like you’re going to stick around,” he said.

Jason didn’t respond. They sat together, finishing their pizza, but apart from each other in a way that was palpable and had _always_ been palpable to Dick. He wasn’t even sure how he had gotten this far with Jason, and there was no course to navigate farther. Jason Todd, younger brother number one, had always been his blind-spot, defined in his mind by Bruce in a way not even Damian had been, and Dick spend so long trying to get himself out of the shadow of the Bat that it was almost impossible to turn back for Jason too. And now, all these years later, after the dust had settled, there’s no one left to give him the barest hint about what to do.

After all, Roy was dead. Willis Todd, if he had ever known a piece of his son, was dead as well. Bruce would have been the worst person to ask and Alfred was probably where Jason received his master’s in deflection.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jason said gruffly. Dick followed him out of the booth and into Gotham, retracing their steps back to Dick’s apartment.

“Have you seen Alfred recently?” Dick asked, trying to circumvent the larger question of if Bruce knew he was in town.

“Are you going to ask me random questions all damn night?” Jason shot back.

“I wouldn’t put it past me.”

“Gross,” Jason said. His shoulders were up by his ears, hands shoved into his jacket pockets.

“Are you going to answer?” Dick shoved ahead to open the apartment complex door.

“No,” Jason said, stopping in the doorway. They were only a few inches apart, and Dick had to look up to see Jason’s face. “I haven’t seen him recently.”

“He’d love to see you,” Dick said when they got into the elevator.

“He’d love to see _you_ ,” Jason practically snarled, but he rolled his shoulders a bit and sighed in an attempt to calm himself down.

As they walked back into the apartment, Jason added, “I’m trying real hard to not let you piss me off, why are you making it so difficult?”

Dick grabbed two beers out of his fridge and handed one to Jason. “It’s kind of what I’m good at?” he postulated.

“Could you try being less good at it?”

They flopped simultaneously onto the couch, side by side again. This time, Dick was pressed close, and they sat shoulder to shoulder, miles apart.

“Could you try being less easy to piss off?” Dick snorted.

Jason sighed again. “I am trying. You think we would have lasted this long if I wasn’t?”

Dick stiffened incrementally and blinked his eyes in sudden realization. “Oh,” he said. He turned to look at Jason. To the outside world, even to Dick most of the time, it seemed that they were the same age. It was always jarring to remember that Jason was barely drinking age, that he was Dick’s younger brother by a few _years_. Bruce had wanted a clone of him at first, had snatched up the first raven-haired, light-eyed boy he could, but Jason Todd had been his own boy, now his own man, and Dick had to stop all the preconceived notions of a rebound Robin gone wrong.

“I was the worst brother to you,” Dick said. Jason’s head whipped to meet Dick’s face. He looked wary, like it was a trap, like any evocation of the past could be. “Why are you here, Jay?”

“I told you why already,” he said, almost whispered.

“It’s really unlikely that someone was specifically targeting the Titans,” Dick said slowly.

Jason locked eyes with Dick. A challenge. “I know,” he said. Then, he leaned back on the couch and put his arm against the back, around Dick.

Dick leaned back into it. “They didn’t die because they were Titans. They died because they were there. All of them. Just because,” Dick’s voice cracked.

“I know,” Jason said.

Dick turned his face to Jason’s shoulder, the leather of his jacket feeling cool on his cheek. He let the few tears that escaped soak into the fabric.

“I’m sorry about Roy,” Dick mumbled. “And Eddie.”

“Me too,” Jason said.

They stayed like that in silence for a while, until Dick’s silent tears subsided and he drifted off to sleep. When he woke only an hour or two later, he was laying on the couch alone. Jason’s duffle bag was gone. The only evidence he had ever been there was a sticky note on Dick’s shoulder with a phone number on it.

He put the number in his phone under Little Wing.


End file.
